She Flies On Her Own Wings
by The-Annie-Oakley
Summary: Seventeen years after the War was ended, Hermione has returned to Wizarding London a changed woman. Years of forced perspective have given her an outlook unpopular with the Old Guard, but she must honor her conscience as she chooses to defend a person demonized by the public for nearly twenty years: Lucius Malfoy.
1. Chapter 1

A gull screamed from the air as Hermione briskly walked from the campground down to the small marina. Her breath puffed out from her mouth, but her fingers were warmed as they clutched the smooth curves of her ceramic mug. Ethel and Mort were up drinking coffee outside their antique Airstream, and she nodded kindly at them as she walked past their camp site. They were long-termers, like her, and knew that, to Hermione, privacy was next to godliness. Her shoes crunched over the fine gravel as the Siuslaw River bloomed into view before her. The gull screamed again as she finally made it to the easternmost dock where she set up her folding chair every morning to watch the boats head west towards the sea, likely towards Heceta Beach and the lighthouse.

It had become her ritual to rise early enough to watch the sailboats leave for sea every morning. There was something significant to her in the departure of the boats, though she knew her demons well enough to avoid analyzing that symbolism.

That gull screamed again, and, shielding her eyes, Hermione raised her head to look for it.

There it was, balancing on a stream of breeze above a particularly haggard boat. She followed its gaze to the sailors below, and felt a sharp twang of sadness at the mother wrapping a scarf around her young daughter's neck. Hermione allowed herself a moment to mourn that her own mother would never again demonstrate such practical affection ever again. Wouldn't even call, couldn't even write. No, for Hermione's mother, and father as well, were happily running their dental practice out of Wallangong, blissfully unaware that they had ever had a daughter.

Hermione clutched tightly at her mug as she fought to not remember the anticipation she felt as she applied for the International Portkey after scrying for their location. She had been surprised at their relocation to Wallangong from Sydney, where she had deposited them after clearing their minds and lives of her existence. While posing as a census-taker, they had invited the strangely familiar young woman in for tea, explaining that the move had been prompted by a desire to settle down and start a family. Hermione's heart broke as her mother politely described the failed pregnancy that had gone unnoticed by them both until, during a routine gynecological exam, her new Australian doctor had noticed evidence of motherhood. They assumed, they told Hermione over steaming mugs of spiced chai, that it had ended early enough along that they never even would have noticed. Hermione had waited until she made it to her hotel room that afternoon before finally breaking down and wailing hysterically. Her entire life, the sum of her experiences with the people she loved most in the world, reduced to a thinly explained-away failed pregnancy.

As Hermione watched the mother and daughter sail off under the distant bridge, its art deco spires topped with mist, she clamped down firmly on the despair welling up in her gut. It did no good, she thought, to dwell. Sipping from her mug, she remembered that she was nearly out of cream and tea leaves, and that forming a shopping list would serve as an excellent distraction from her morose thoughts.

#

Hermione bent down, setting her mug on the slatted wood of the dock, and slung the backpack straps of her folding chair around her shoulders. Once her seat was unfolded and angled just so, she sank heavily into its vinyl, patterned folds, and pulled the moleskine from her back pocket. Remembering to pluck the dulled pencil from behind her right ear, she began to write a shopping list for the day. As she debated between eating chicken breast for dinner again, or buying a bit of fish from the marina later in the morning, Hermione heard a voice from two decades before.

"I just knew you'd have a book in hand when I finally found you, 'Mione."

The pencil stilled against the unlined page, and Hermione's stomach dropped. She had thought to go the rest of her life without ever hearing the voice of Harry Potter ever again, even deepened and rasped with the years gone by as it was. Hermione wished suddenly that she had her wad on her person, rather than having stowed it away in a nook of her camper. She would have very much liked to disappear. She twisted in her seat, but did not stand up to greet him.

"Harry. How did you find me?" She nearly flinched at the accusation in her own voice. As infrequently as she conversed with anyone, she often forgot how very severe she could sound.

"Lavender was the one who finally found you. She scried for three weeks, and the answer was clear enough, if unexpected. We always thought you must have gone to Australia." The accusation in his voice was just as clear.

Hermione nodded and closed her notebook, replacing her pencil behind her ear. She hated that he would see her this way, hair still tangled from sleep, legs shoved hastily in sheepskin boots and graying sweatpants. She imagined that she looked every day of her 35 years.

"I did go to Australia, though I didn't stay. I suppose I better invite you in for your trouble. It's not often that I have company, so you'll just have to excuse the mess." She stood, bones popping in the cold, and bent to fold up her chair. A twang of embarrassment clenched her gut at the floral chair, fraying and sagging, seen through new eyes.

"I went by your campsite, but an older couple told me you'd be here instead." Harry looked at his palms, and Hermione could see tears swimming in his eyes. All the many years and miles between them, summed up in a simple comment that he couldn't find her where he had looked. The silence yawned into something significant between them, and Hermione grew desperate to end it.

"Come on, then. This way." She walked past him, astonished at how tall she had remembered him to be, how much shorter he was standing before her. "That would be Ethel and Mort. They stay here during the summer, and travel to Arizona to visit their daughter in the winter. I think the Americans would call them 'snowbirds', though I may be misunderstanding the term."

"Hermione." Her desperation grew.

"I don't have much tea left, so we'l have to stretch the leaves a little. The market doesn't open for a few hours yet, though I might have some coffee grounds lying about somewhere."

"Hermione!" She turned around sharply.

"What, Harry? What is it exactly that you want from me?"

He seemed to shrink further into his frame, hands clenched at his sides. He wore hiking boots, she noticed, new hiking boots. She wouldn't be surprised if the price sticker was still stuck to the sole.

"I don't know, but it isn't THIS. I certainly didn't expect that you'd be happy to see me, not after this much avoidance after this many years, but I thought...I thought you'd feel SOMETHING. Anger, surprise, fear...shame. Something more than this...nothing I'm getting from you. I mean, for Merlin's sake-"

"Don't say that." Rage began to bubble beneath the surface of Hermione's skin, but she tamped it down before it could reach her heart.

"Don't say what, Hermione? Merlin?" She blew up.

"Damnit, Harry! I said, don't say that! I've worked too hard and too long at this for you to blow my cover with your strange epithets and your stupid new boots. Who were you trying to fool with those, by the way? Me, the other campers, or merely yourself?"

Harry clenched his fists even tighter, knuckles whitening. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

"Mione, I didn't come to blow your cover. I didn't come to ruin your life, or whatever else you probably suspect of me at this point. I just...I had to see you and tell you in person."

Anger was replaced by something slimy, like dread, crawling up her spine.

"Tell me what, Harry?"

He took another breath.

"You're being deposed. Lucius Malfoy is up for parole, and the Ministry has called you as a witness in his hearing. You're being summoned back to London to give a statement."

"You're joking."

"Jesus Christ, Hermione, you think I traveled this far, to play a joke on you? We haven't been friends for seventeen years. Does that sound like it would be even remotely the real reason for me being here?"

Hermione thought about it. She thought about the unanswered letters, sent back unopened. She thought about the Howlers she'd had to silently dispatch. She even thought about the tears that would fall late at night as she lay alone in bed, repetitively tracing the scarred words on her arm.

"No, I don't suppose it makes sense for this to be a joke."

"Well, call out the bloody parade floats, mates. Hermione finally realizes that the whole damn world doesn't revolve around her."

#

They had reached her campsite. She fumbled with the key for a moment, and then unlocked the door to the small pop-up camper that rested in the back of her aging Chevy. They stepped up into the small space, and awkwardly maneuvered until they were both sitting at the beige dinette table.

Harry looked around the camper with raised eyebrows. Hermione followed his gaze, feeling a small burst of shame at the modest interior.

"Well, Hermione. You've gone full native."

The shame blossomed into full-blown defensiveness.

"Fuck you, Harry. I happen to like my life. I would have thought after years begging for scraps at the Burrow, you'd be a little more sensitive to poverty."

His eyes hardened into flat, green orbs, but he said nothing.

Hermione waved a hand, and the pilot light under the stove clicked on. Flame burst from the one burner, heating the stainless steel percolator above it. She sighed at Harry's twitch of surprise.

"Just because I live like a gypsy doesn't mean I forgo the comforts and conveniences of my innate ability for magic."

"I just assumed...I mean, you live in a campground, Hermione."

"Mine is a self-imposed exile, Harry. I take what comforts I want and reject what I don't."

Hard green eyes went even harder.

"Clearly."

The percolator began to bubble, and Hermione got up to pour the coffee into another mug, chipped and stained. She set it in front of Harry, and he grasped it in both hands, warming his chilled fingers. She sat down across from him once more.

"So, why didn't the Ministry send one of their flunkies to summon me for this deposition?" Harry blushed.

"Well, I did eventually become an Auror, Hermione. Technically, I AM the flunkie sent to summon you. Collect you, really. The deposition is in three days time."

"Huh. Congrats, Harry. I know you always said you wanted to be an Auror. Three days, hmm? Cutting it rather close, aren't you? What if I refuse to come back with you?"

Harry had the decency, she thought, to blush even deeper at her inquiry.

"That's why they send an Auror, 'Mione. There is no refusing the Ministry. Not anymore. After Voldemort was...killed...and his lackeys cleared out of the Ministry, it left those behind a little trigger happy. It's more Wild West these days than you'd maybe believe."

The fact was, though, that Hermione could believe it. Had believed it was coming so firmly, that she'd left nearly two decades before. Not that an unsettled regime was her ONLY reason for fleeing, however. Hermione looked out the grimy window at the misty morning sky. It looked like it was going to be a beautiful day. Shame, that. Bad news had always come to her on beautiful days.

But, then again, hadn't she been thinking that a change might be good? Hadn't she been eyeing the 101 like it held some sort of answer to a question she didn't know how to ask yet?

"Alright, Harry. I'll come quietly. No need for use of deadly force." His eyes, predictably, boringly, widened.

"That simple, huh? Just like that?"

"Well, I do have one condition."

"Anything, 'Mione. Merlin, everyone will be so happy to see you!"

"I don't want to see the Old Guard, Harry. I left all that behind. If I do return to England, it will be on business, and business only."

"...Alright, then. I'll do my best to head them off, though you might find them a bit more persistent than you think." Hermione sipped the last dregs of her tea, and set it on the table.

"I suppose that will all depend on whether you can keep my whereabouts a secret. Honestly, it would be better if you simply acted like I didn't come back with you at all. I can't overstate how little I wish to be reminded of days of yore, Harry."

He seemed to shrink, his shoulders slumping in defeat. Eventually, he nodded.

"Ron will know something's up, he's not technically an Auror, though he does work in MLE, and he knows the protocol for these types of things as well as I. But I can be vague with everyone else long enough for you to give your testimony and return here unmolested."

"There is one more condition, Harry." He slammed his coffee mug against the table and Hermione wondered if it would crack with the force of the blow.

"What now?"

Hermione wondered why she wasn't more nervous to get her demand out. Perhaps enough time had finally passed, perhaps the old wounds on her soul had finally healed.

I won't testify against Lucius. I'm going to testify on his behalf."


	2. Chapter 2

"Well, I guess we'd better leave immediately. The paperwork's all been drawn up with you listed as a witness for the prosecution, that'll all need to be revised." Harry was bustling now, looking for something to do with his hands. Hermione was confused by his reaction.

"Aren't you...well, honestly, aren't you angry?"

"It would depend, it seems, on whether you said that to make me angry, Hermione, because childish spite was never your game before."

"I didn't, but that also had never stopped you from jumping to conclusions about me in the past." She surprised herself with her composure. Hermione didn't remember a conversation with anyone lasting as long as this one in nearly two decades.

Harry sighed, his hand stilling on the table top, his coffee mug long since drained and forgotten under the tiny windowsill.

"Look, Hermione, I don't know you anymore. You don't know me. I was set here to collect you because of the parole hearing. Whatever testimony you wish to enter, however insane I may find it, is your business. Let's not pretend that we mean enough to one another to cause insult. I will ferry you to London, per my orders, and my part in this will be fulfilled. I can go back to my life, and to pretending that we never met. That IS what you want, isn't it, Hermione?"

Hermione stilled at his words, given pause at the frank honesty of his assessment. Was it what she wanted?

"Harry, I feel as if I must provide some clarity here. You seem to be under the mistaken impression that I wish to erase our friendship entirely."

Harry broke in, bitterly.

"Well, I can't imagine where I would have gotten THAT idea, what with the ignored letters and the magically-hidden living situation here in the middle of the godforsaken wilderness."

"Yes...I can see where you would have concluded that I wished to cut ties with you as much as everyone else. But it wasn't like that, Harry. I'd just found out that my parents could never go back to the way they had been. In essence, I killed them, Harry. I stole their lives and sent them on their way as new people. And yet, I was lauded as a hero in the War as much as you. 'For the greater good' they all said, trying to console me. But the truth was, and still is, that I performed the darkest of magic to, in effect, murder my own parents at the behest of a radical political group. I was a child, Harry, we were all children. Yet the Order sent us into the trenches with all the idealism and enthusiasm of every terrorist organization that ever was. When it was all over, I couldn't live with myself. I couldn't bear the reality of what I had done, and I couldn't bear you lot trying to ease my soul with your 'greater good' rhetoric. I had to go. I just had to."

Hermione hadn't planned on saying that much, and she inhaled deeply at the expended energy. Harry looked at her, searchingly, and then looked out the window.

"'Be kind to yourself' and all that, Hermione? Do you think you're the only one with demons, with nightmares, with fucking regrets? What makes you so special?"

"What makes me special, Harry, is that I didn't stay and kow tow to the new regime. I didn't offer up embellished testimony about the heroism of the dead, and I certainly didn't stay to crucify those who had fought against the new order. I wanted to start over, to live a life uninfluenced by political radicals and lovers of violence. And I cut ties because, despite all their promises of a new and free society, I knew that I had only one place in it: the token Muggleborn wife of the hero-son of the so-called Blood Traitors. I didn't want to marry Ron, Harry, I didn't want to be trotted out like a prize horse. I didn't know what I wanted, but it certainly wasn't that."

The campground had begun waking up around them. The noises of children laughing and generators firing up had begun to filter through the thin glass of the windows in the camper.

"Which is it, Hermione? Were you devastated by the loss of your parents or did you run away from the Weasley family?"

"I think it started out being that my family was gone forever, but over time, I came to realize that I had been using that grief as a crutch, an excuse. I HAD wanted to break ties with Ron, and with the Order in general, but it wasn't until after I had already run away that I knew it for sure. It felt right, Harry. However you felt, however Ron felt, leaving felt right for me." Her composure, so sure at first, had begun to crumble. "I'm sorry that I hurt you. I am. But you have to understand that I felt, for a long time, that it was this or that. I felt that it was either stay in Britain and be the trophy on Ron's arm, or leave and finally live without the stigma of my birth, of my sins, hanging over my head all the time. I stood tall for the first time in months, that day I got off the plane in Los Angeles. I felt liberated. Whatever the consequences have been of that decision to run, I am satisfied with the outcome."

Harry said nothing for a long time, fingering what looked like a scar on his left hand. Hermione saw that the words from the blood quill, forced on him by Umbridge so many years ago, were still there. Faded, but still on his hand. For the first time in a long time, Hermione wished she could simply reach out and take that hand.

"I suppose I can understand the guilt about your parents. I still feel that way about Sirius. They try to excuse it all away, but I know that truly, it was my own fault that he died. Hearing Ron, even Ginny, try to ease my guilt, it makes me almost sick. It's gotten to the point where we don't discuss it anymore. But Hermione, you had to know that Ron wasn't your only option in our world. I mean, maybe to Molly, but when has she EVER been completely in her right mind? Sending her children into battle like that, like a zealot, when she should have taken them and ran. I will never understand it, and Ginny flies into too much of a rage whenever I try to bring it up. The truth is, Hermione, you took some of our ability to heal with you when you left. You were the balm to our wounds. We just didn't ever imagine you having wounds of your own that we couldn't heal."

When had she started to cry? And tears were leaking from her eyes, silently dripping down her cheeks. Hermione did nothing to stop them from flowing, didn't rub at them in shame or anger at herself. It felt good to cry, here, with Harry, the brother she had always wanted. If it had taken seventeen years to come to this moment, Hermione felt none of them.

"I'm sorry, for my part. I'm sorry you felt that you couldn't stay and that when you left, you felt like you couldn't come back. I'm glad you've found peace here, Hermione. But don't shut us...me...out in order to achieve it. I've done nothing but wish the best for you all these years, even when you wouldn't owl me back. Forget the parole hearing, you can testify however you want if it's up to me, just, come back for a bit. Maybe people aren't as you're remembering them."

Hermione sniffed loudly.

"If I do go back, I guess I'm afraid that I won't be able to leave."

Harry left off worrying his scar, and grasped Hermione's hand in his. It eased something in her heart, like a door opening onto a sunny morning.

"Hermione, you do what you want. If these last years have proved nothing else, you're absolutely autonomous. Nobody can tell you what to do. Come back to Britain, take care of this hearing nonsense, and stay for a little while. If you hate it, I'll have a Portkey made up for you just for that, so you can bail whenever you need to. Just, give us a chance. It's been a long time, yeah?"

Hermione nodded, feeling braver with her hand in Harry's after so many years.

"Yeah, it sure has been."

"So, let's get you packed for a nice stay in London, and work on getting a trip home arranged, how does that sound?"

"It sounds good."

#

The packing, and the trip to the International Portkey office in Portland took up the remainder of the day. Ensconced in a small booth at a diner just outside of Portland, Harry once again grabbed Hermione's hand.

"So, d'you think you could tell me why you want to testify for Malfoy, then?"

Although she had known the questions were coming, she paused for a moment, to collect her thoughts. Stirring her drink, something tasty with ginger beer and mint, she thought of how to phrase herself.

"Well, it's actually got very little to do with Lucius Malfoy as a person, you know. I only met him a few times, really. I can't think why the Ministry would want me to testify against him in the first place, come to think of it. Any insight there, Harry?"

"I think it's because you're the last mystery, the disappearing act in the Golden Trio. Ron and I have both been trotted out for various cases over the years, including Snape's, though his was posthumous. Our names, though still worth something, are old hat by now. You, however, you haven't supported anyone since the War. I think their goal is two-fold: suss out your true loyalties, and exploit your name to serve their aims. You testifying for the other side will frustrate both of those aims, though, so be prepared for some public outcry. The Prophet is still pretty much in the Ministry's pocket, they'll definitely use that against you now that you're going off-leash."

Hermione gripped Harry's hand harder as a flash of fear struck at her gut.

"How did Lavender find me again, Harry?"

"Don't worry on that account. She's a rather accomplished Seer, though she's much better at finding lost things than she is at seeing the future. She searched for you every year for Ron's birthday, it's all he ever asks for anymore. They aren't together, if you're wondering that as well. He hasn't settled with anyone since you left, though has been quite the parade of hopefuls. You're sort of built up as this ideal in his mind. You'll want to watch out for that, if you see him. He'll demand it, though I can try to head him off if it bothers you that much."

Hermione could tell from his expression that he hoped it wouldn't, and she said little.

"I won't promise a tearful reunion with Ron, Harry, though I won't run from him if we're in the same room. It's been a long time for me, my feelings for him withered on the vine many years ago."

"Anyways, the Ministry wasn't really LOOKING for you until this case, and Lavender is good, but even she can't lie under Veritaserum."

"They...interrogated her?" Memories of cruel girlhood remarks were quickly replaced with concern, and Hermione wondered, not for the first time, what exactly she went home to when she traveled to Britain.

"Like I said, Wild West."

"So she only found me this year?"

Harry nodded.

"YOu've been very good at hiding from us, Hermione. YOu cover your tracks well, you don't use your real name, the whole nine yards. But Lavender has this innate ability. It almost seems...cumulative. The longer she looks for something, the more specific she can be when she does find it. When she told me that you were in Florence, she knew the name of the campground, even the make and model of your truck, your site number, everything. She's scary good."

"Hmm. Tell me more about Lucius Malfoy. Why is he up for parole at all, I would have though that he'd have been Kissed for sure."

Harry let go of Hermione's hand and leaned back in the booth, signaling to their waitress that he wanted another drink. She brought it over disinterestedly, forgetting to take his empty glass with her when she walked away.

"It's honestly been quite the public debate. There are those who want him Kissed, for sure. Every so often, the Ministry still raids the Malfoy estate for any trinket they'd have been stupid enough to leave lying around. However, they've got nothing on him. He's a model prisoner, his wife and son re-entered society with newfound charity towards the under-privileged. They've all three of them done everything they can to portray this aura of...contrition, maybe? It just doesn't seem right, and a lot of people can see that. That's why he hasn't been Kissed yet. So, the Ministry figures they can haul out a war hero, stir up some anti-Death-Eater hysteria, and end the whole matter before summer."

"How awful! What charges have they brought against him?"

"That's the other strange thing about it. He hasn't even been formally charged with anything. They initially brought him in during the chaos of the Reconstruction, that's what they're calling the take-over of the Ministry, and I think he just sort of got lost in the shuffle. He's been held without trial now for seventeen years."

"Well, that's obviously not right."

Harry chuckled.

"This isn't S.P.E.W., Hermione, and he isn't a cuddly house elf. He's still a very dangerous man."

"Yes, but without any due process. I'll need to read up on British Wizarding Law, of course, but from a human standpoint alone, that just isn't okay."

Her eyes had gone distant as she planned a visit to Diagon Alley to scrounge up some research material. Perhaps she could convince Draco Malfoy to lend her the Malfoy library.

"Hermione! Earth to Hermione!"

"Oh, yes, terribly sorry. I got a bit distracted there."

"Look, you aren't needed to save Malfoy. I'm not even sure the Ministry would let him go even if they WERE caught for the due process thing. It may be a case of them doing the right thing in spite of their own incompetence. Lucius Malfoy isn't a nice person, Hermione. He's done a lot of very nasty things for a very long time."

"But it's not fair, is it? And I'm all about what's fair. Perhaps if they'd only give him a trial, they could convict him properly. Only, no, that wouldn't work, because it would mean admitting that they forgot to have one for nearly two decades, yeah?"

"At this point, I'm not sure why they're holding a parole hearing at all, if for no other reason than the appearance of justice being served. It's been enough time that people would wonder about a parole hearing, but not long enough that they'd forget why he's in Azkaban in the first place."

"Answer me this, Harry: Is the current regime better than the old one?"

Harry hesitated in answering, looking around the diner as if for some spy, waiting to catch him on a single insubordinate word.

"Honestly, Hermione, I don't think so. I got into the MLE to make a change, to save lives. But yet I find myself being hauled out for every Ministry gala, every charity event, every ribbon cutting. I could have asked for the whole bloody government, and I honestly think they would have given it to me. This Lucius thing, it's so far from the top of the list of grievances, but it is indicative of what's going on."

Hermione could only sip her drink, and ponder on her next move. This felt right, plotting again, commiserating over the offenses of the regime. It was familiar territory, and suddenly Hermione was very, very scared. For the first time all day, she wondered how long she could hide again if she were simply to Disapparate somewhere very far, far away.

"I will testify for Malfoy, because that's right, but that's it. I won't play instrument in your little coup. I can see now that that's where this conversation has been heading, and I want to make one thing very clear: I am nobody's tool. I want no part in overthrowing another government. I lost both my parents in the last one, and I fear what I would lose in the next one."

Harry drained his drink, something that smelled strongly of whiskey, and rubbed at his jaw.

"I won't discuss it anymore, since it upsets you. But just so you know, it's all me at this point. There is no Order of the Phoenix this time, because they've become the thing they fought to abolish. It's just me, sitting at my desk watching the abuse of power grow more blatant, and the jail cells fill with suspects instead of offenders. I'm worried, Hermione, and this hearing thing couldn't have come at a better time. I just needed to tell someone what was going on that isn't already a part of it, and that's been done. So finish your drink, and we'll use the Portkey to get back to London tonight, and we won't talk about this any more. Good enough?"

Hermione noticed that her hands were shaking, but she nodded just the same.

"Good enough, Harry. Good enough."


End file.
